How to Teach Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns can be used to replace nouns acting as subjects, objects, or possessive markers
in sentences.

For each of these uses, there is a different set of pronouns so students should be introduced to them
separately. These are just some of the pronouns that students will encounter during their English studies
however personal pronouns are also some of the most commonly used.

How to Proceed

1. 1

Warm up

Begin by talking about people so that students can provide some sample sentences to work with
in the next section. You can ask questions as simple as “What’s your name?” to start off with.
Write sentences you would like to use on the board. You can have students volunteer to answer
questions, play a short game, or call on students for this section. Since the introduction may take
some time and requires students to really focus, try to conduct an activity that gets them out of
their chairs and moving around.

2. 2

Introduce: Subjective

Introduce subjective pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we, you, and they. It is common to make two
columns with three rows each so that the singular pronouns are on the left and the plural pronouns
are on the right. He, she, and it are generally listed together. Maintaining this format when
introducing other sets of pronouns will help students remember them. Once these are on the board
do some choral repetition for pronunciation practice and write some sentences on the board. Be
sure to have a sentence for each pronoun and ask students to tell you which word or words should
be replaced. If students say that David should be replaced with the word she, you can give them
another opportunity to provide the correct pronoun and then talk about why he is the correct
replacement in this case.

3. 3

Practice Personal Pronouns

Continue to conduct practice activities as a class until you think your students have a good
understanding of these new words. You can have students form teams of about four for an
activity where when you say a sentence, the first team to write the correct pronoun on the board
 gets a point. If you say “The dog likes walks.” students should write it on the board. It is a good
idea to do activities like this so that as issues come up, you can address them rather than having to
go back to clarify certain things after a lot of individual practice has been done. For speaking
practice you can play Fruit Basket or simply have students do a short writing activity and then ask
them to read aloud what they wrote.

4. 4

Introduce: Objective/Possessive

You can introduce the objective pronouns me, you, him, her, it, us, you, and them as well as the
possessive pronouns mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours, and theirs in much the same way you
introduced the subjective pronouns above. Students should have an easier time understanding
their meaning and memorizing them after having practiced using subjective pronouns. Introduce
and practice these pronouns in separate classes until students have a firm grasp on the
material.

5. 5

Practice

Similar practice exercises to the one you used for subjective pronouns can also be used for
objective and possessive pronouns. To keep students engaged and focused on the material, be
sure to include some new activities as well. Fill in the blank and multiple choice exercises are
both simple ways to check comprehension. Students could be asked to talk about something they
own for writing and speaking practice using possessive pronouns. The prompt for the activity
could be “This ~ is mine.” and you could require that students bring the item to class and write a
certain number of sentences about it.

6. 6

Review

Once students have covered these three types of personal pronouns, you should do some activities
which combine all three. Whether you choose to use worksheets or games to do this is up to you
and depends on how well your class usually responds to certain types of exercises. A review class
which combines everything they have learned about pronouns may be a challenge but it can also
help you discover what students are struggling with and where their confusion lies. If necessary
you can address these things in a later lesson.

Your students will study other types of pronouns during their English course but personal
pronouns are especially important because they are used quite frequently. Students will have the
opportunity to practice using personal pronouns often so there is no need to make a special effort to
include them in future lessons.

See our collection of personal pronouns worksheets and lesson activities